Once black pillar, embattled Muslim bakery is shuttered

NATION

August 12, 2007|By Neil Macfarquhar, the New York Times

OAKLAND, Calif. -- A federal judge's order to liquidate the assets of Your Black Muslim Bakery will shutter one of this city's black-nationalist institutions, a step called long overdue by many members of the clergy and community activists.

"They had veered far, far away from the basic tenets of the Muslim faith," said Amos Brown, senior pastor at the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco.

"They had become agents and perpetrators of terror and vigilantism."

The bankruptcy ruling late Thursday to pay off about $900,000 in debt and back taxes came a week after the killing of a local journalist, Chauncey Bailey, a case in which a handyman employed by the bakery is a prime suspect.

Bailey, who had been investigating the bakery's finances for a newspaper story, was shot at close range in daylight in downtown Oakland on Aug. 2.

Yusuf Bey opened the bakery, famous for its bean pies, in the late 1960s, becoming a well-regarded figure by relentlessly advocating black self-reliance.

Bey and his descendants drew their inspiration from Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam leader.

Several black Muslim clerics in the Bay Area recall that Muhammad ex-communicated Bey in the early 1970s, but the reasons were murky.

"They claimed Islam, but they were absolutely not Muslims," said Delmont Waqia, the director of Islamic studies at Al Salaam mosque in Oakland and Bailey's brother-in-law, noting that Bey did not worship at any mosque.

Community activists raised in Oakland remember Your Black Muslim Bakery as a beacon that became a string of enterprises, including a community school, which is now closed, and numerous bakeries.